In the Internet-centric society today, every individual can be identified by many identifications (IDs) including name, passport number, driver license ID, passwords, account numbers, badge ID number, membership ID, etc. Various aspects of the society depend on these IDs to operate; for example, banking, stock trading, tax collection, supply chain management, shopping, e-Commerce, government operation, clubs, just to name a few. Different IDs may be used in different environments and in different societal activities.
With the emerging applications of the “Internet of Things” (IoT), there are more “things” connected to the Internet. Each “Internet-connected thing” needs one or more IDs to support the operation of IoT activities. Therefore, there is a need for the Internet-connected things to be identified by multiple IDs. Similar to a person having many IDs and using different IDs in different occasions, it is necessary for each Internet-connected thing to have multiple IDs and each thing uses different IDs in different IoT operations.
Currently, billions of semiconductor chips are fabricated every year, and billions of IoT things with embedded semiconductor chips are produced every year. Therefore, the generation, storage, manipulation and compatibility of the IDs for each semiconductor chip are essential for the IoT ecosystem.
An example of a conventional ID is the barcode, which is widely used in today's supply chain management. Each item is given a barcode as its ID during its lifecycle in the supply chain. As the Internet emerges and e-Commerce continues to replace physical stores, the barcode becomes inadequate in dealing with the security requirements in many aspects of IoT operations. Thus, there is a need for improving the ID generation and management in network-connected devices. As a semiconductor supplier, there is a need to design an identification mechanism for every chip shipped.